The use of slides for the movement of persons and chattel property from one point to another is well known. Slides for chattel property have found frequent use for manufacturing operations in the handling of bulk goods. Slides for the movement of animals and people have found less acceptance traditionally, due perhaps in part to the relatively uncontrolled nature of the sliding movement connected therewith and the possibility for resultant injury together with, at least for persons, a relatively undignified experience generally associated with travel by slide.
Yet slides have found a nitch in the movement of persons as well as in the movement of goods and other chattel property. In addition to chattel property uses, slides have found particularly utility in providing relatively rapid emergency egress from places of heightened danger. For example, slides have found a substantial acceptance in providing emergency egress from aircraft and from building structures containing processes and the like having a capability for becoming dangerous to human life in a very short time period.
For movement of chattel property, slides typically been formed from metals and other sturdy materials configures and supported in a permanent or semi-permanent arrangement. For the occasional or emergency movement of goods, animals and people, slides more typically have been of a temporary nature and have been formed from fabric or textile plies and collapsed for compact storage until needed. Such collapsed, fabric ply slides typically have been configured for rapid erection such as by the inflation of tubular supports integral thereto establishing a structural framework for a fabric ply sliding surface.
One typical such emergency slide can be found incorporated in the door assemblies of many airliners. The slide typically consists of a pair of tubular support members configured for rapid inflation employing a source of pressurized air carried aboard the aircraft. The tubular support members typically are interconnected by a sliding surface. The sliding surface and the tubular support members typically are formed from one or more plies of a rubberized fabric.
In use, these rubberized fabric structures can develop punctures; the punctures can evolve into tears under the strains and stresses of use, which tears can leave a slide unusable before the emergency for which it has been deployed has passed. In the past, where such slides have been formed from fabric plies impregnated or coated with a rubberizing compound and the curingly vulcanized to produce a rubber slide surface, it has been suggested that a plurality of rubberized plies vulcanizably joined could be employed to form the slide thereby, hopefully, through additive effect of the strengths of the plurality of the plies, providing greater tear retardation. The inclusion of additional plies, however, can add considerably to the weight of any such slide. Where such slides are employed, for example, in aircraft or other weight sensitive applications, the additional weight imposed by additional plies of rubberized fabric can be unacceptable.
Likewise, past suggestions have opposed the use of heavy or stronger, more tear resistant fabrics in forming a rubberized ply configured to perform as a sliding surface. Such heavier fabrics, particularly when containing or including sufficient rubberizing compound can add unacceptably to the weight of such slide in weight sensitive applications.
A slide means and method having in substantial proportion the low weight advantages associated with single ply coated fabric slide structural configurations while providing strength and tear propagations resistance substantially more elevated than those commonly associated with relatively lightweight single ply coated fabrics, could find substantially utility in the fabrication of evacuation slides for use, primarily during emergencies, in evacuating aircraft, elevated trains, and other structures such as explosives factories not readily accessible employing stairs or other typical means of evacuation during times of emergency.